


Eros

by BranwellBronte



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Cigarettes, Frottage, Internalized Homophobia, Kissing, M/M, Mentions of Blood, Oral Sex, Queer Themes, Self-Acceptance, Smoking, queer identity, religious issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 07:02:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19883563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BranwellBronte/pseuds/BranwellBronte
Summary: Irving and Tozer's physical bond is emotionally healing as well.





	Eros

“You’re more nervous than I am.”

“That’s slightly rich, coming from you. Don’t you say things like ‘God sees me with equal clarity when I both eat and take a shit’? I’d be nervous all the time if I were you.”

“You don’t have to do this. And you’ve checked the lock three times, it will keep.”

“I do have to do this, and don’t tell me how to lock my own cabin.”

The key rattles in and out of the lock a fourth time until Tozer removes it from the keyhole, gently tests the door, finds it locked, and still doesn’t move to face Irving on the bed. With one hand, Tozer is rippling the key back and forth through his fingers. His other arm hangs by his side. He’s shifting his weight from one foot to the other, hips angling this way and that. It would almost be a wanton gesture but for his slightly hunched-over back, the subtle but stiff bend toward the door, as though he’s going to unlock it and bolt and so escape from a prison cell. In the dim light of the one lit lantern, Irving watches him palm the key into his other hand and roll it through his fingers. He’s stalling, but not because he doesn’t want this. He’ll turn around soon. He knows there are only so many moments you can play at absentminded distraction before you really do want to turn around and face the man you’ve asked to fuck.

***

The situation has been brewing for some time, but it boiled over tonight, so hot as to burn your hands and your sense of restraint too, the smoke blown away on the winds of caution thrown with a firm wrist. Captain Crozier’s order to abandon the ships has upset both equilibrium of the hopeful minds of the others and the pull of holiness keeping the knees of queer men glued down before the altar of causes long since lost. Irving had felt the itch in Tozer as they’d stood on the deck for the last time. It had been similar to the itch Irving himself had felt during the first incident, when Tozer had engaged Irving in mindless conversation in a hallway, tugging on Irving’s sleeve when Irving laughed at his joke. The itch did not abate when Tozer had left, when Irving had brought his sleeve to his nose and smelled the faint burn of tobacco on it. He’d immediately sent the jacket to the laundry but when he saw Tozer again, he had to battle the urge to bring his sleeve back to his nose as if resisting the current of the stream bearing him the wrong way.

“Is it so very wrong, in fact?” Tozer had asked him, palms pressed against the wall on either side of Irving’s hips in a nook near the stairwell to the upper deck. “I’ve read my Bible and there are passages that imply-”

Irving had laid his head back against the wall and looked as tired as he could manage to hide the faint excitement blooming in his stomach. “If you spout any ‘David and Jonathan’ lines at me, I will write you up here and now.”

One of Tozer’s hands had dropped limply and Irving had turned neatly on his heel and away before he could be trapped again by them. Then Tozer’s fingers were gripping Irving’s cuff and Irving had a flashing image of himself sniffing his sleeve in only a minute’s time.

“I can’t let this be. You’re as interested as I am. I see your God-fearing face when you look at me. You might fear Him but I see your eyes as one queer to another.” Tozer had lowered his voice to be barely audible but the earnestness in his eyes had shouted his desperation. “You can’t smother the wail of your weeping heart. I can hear it. I know, because I hear mine every day. And it will be so easy if we’re careful. We can do it right after dinner, when it’s not too late in the day for you to visit me if anyone sees you leave my cabin. One turn of the lock and we can do anything, go anywhere, be anyone we want. Be who we really are.”

“You continue to imply I’m not at peace with who I am.”

“Oh, like fuck you are.”

“I can write you up for that statement, too.”

“Alright. Alright. You know, you’re terribly sympathetic in your own way. ‘I’ll write you up,’ instead of, ‘I’ll have you flogged.’ Why is that?”

Irving had used his other hand to pluck Tozer’s fingers from his sleeve, trying not to shiver at the feel of skin touching another man’s skin. “God’s mercy is a wondrous thing.”

“Fine job you did invoking him into miracle-working when you stood there doing nothing while watching that bastard Hickey’s pasty arse be flo-”

“I am _not_ your _three crows of the rooster._ ” Irving had strode a step away and shaken out his jacket sleeve. Harsh words, but your own tongue bites you when you’re scared of your own feelings. “You do not get to determine any supposed betrayals of mine against _anyone_ and tally them up to find me guilty before the Lord. You are not my judge, you are not my jury, you are not my-”

“-executioner. Spare me the court case, alright? I’ll see you later. Keep weeping. I’ll hear you.” Tozer’s lip had looked like it might curl, but his face fell the longer he held Irving’s gaze. “But I could dry your tears. Now that would be a mercy. The only one I could give you, but I’d do my best.” Glassy eyes now, sorrow etched on them so finely like the engravings of the masters of old. Then he’d straightened and hauled himself up the stairs while Irving had turned his back against the wall again and brought his sleeve to his nose, blasphemous thoughts already a prickle at every edge of his mind. The scent staunched his lonely tears for the brief moment he allowed himself before he sent the jacket back to the laundry and suffered the itch like one suffers hunger when a meal has been finished but the stomach still craves more sustenance.

On the deck a few days later, attempting to enjoy a last walk before the abandoning, Irving had leaned against the railing and considered the state of his soul. Hypocrisy is not named one of the seven deadly sins, yet he could still mentally take the cat to himself for giving Mr. Hickey a warning and then having weak knees in the presence of another man, even a high-ranking Marine, rude and obscene as he was. His mind had wandered to the dark woods near the gates of the Inferno. Surely birch trees grew there, and surely he could snap off a branch with his bare hands and bloody his own back with the log. Then he could hike further up into the woods and sit on his bloody tree limb and preach a sermon on the mount to an audience of one.

Maybe two, if Sergeant Tozer still cared to chase him and touch his sleeve.

Irving had cupped his chin in one hand, then yanked it away, because lieutenants don’t slouch. The rude and obscene man and his base desires were beautiful in their honesty. The vocalization of that honesty was the highlight of Irving’s life, if he allowed himself to acknowledge that, which he had finally decided to do as he wished he could staunch the blood dripping from his lashed spirit. Yes. This is a want. Pain has run its course, and what it’s found lacking in him, Solomon Tozer seems to want to fill in those gaps with his desperate, crying, honest desire.

Irving had smelled the tobacco so thickly in his nose that it had been with a jolt when he realized his imagined scent was real and emanating from Tozer next to him at the railing. Irving had gripped the railing harder, his nerve faltering, fear planting a black stem under his words.

“How can I disappoint you this time, Sergeant, in a way I have yet to do? Gluttony is a sin and I am ready to charge you for your love of harping on me to-”

“There’s a love of men.” The word “love” cracked with a hitch in Tozer’s voice but he’d kept his body turned away from Irving’s. “I know there is, just like you know. I’m scared. But if I don’t ask you to do this now, I’ll never have the chance to do it, and I don’t sleep at night but for the weeping. Come to bed with me. Just the once. Before I have to stifle myself and bind myself up. I’m ready to do that, you know. I have clean linen at the ready, to wrap around my diseased heart and keep it from infecting everyone.”

So much intensity, how did he not keel over from exhaustion? Irving had rubbed his forehead with one glove. “Such melancholy metaphors. Meant to stoke my pity?”

Tozer had dug one heel into the deck. “I’m already damned. Why not talk pretty? If you’re done with me, John, just say so, though, would you? Stop smelling your sleeve every time I touch it. Yes, you think I’ve never noticed. You’re not always right about everything. And I wouldn’t have you any other way.”

The black stem had bent and Irving had snapped it. There is no way on earth, in Heaven, or in Hell to argue with a man who loves men who desires you just the way you are, the way you ring true. Irving had folded his hands behind his back as he felt a seam rip somewhere in his being. He’d considered again. Birch lashes, cat floggings. He’d done all but beaten rusty nails into his own palms after climbing up the cross to let himself hang for half a day or longer. St. John Irving the Penitent, now and forevermore bleeding in front of his God, accidentally dying by his own hand from blood loss.

“Do you perceive the state of my hands?” he’d whispered.

“Shaking,” Tozer had said, not unkindly, without turning his head.

Some kind of instinct. Some kind of connection. The clock ticking, the preciousness of this can’t be allowed to waste away.

Do it.

“Smoke a full cigarette.” Irving had tossed the various bloody wood and branches over the ships edge. “Then I’ll come to you after dinner.”

***

Tozer hadn’t moved after Irving had left him on the deck, much like he’s not moving now. Irving hadn’t turned his head to see if Tozer had been looking at him. His stillness had told him everything he needed to know about his offer. Men don’t fuss if they’re upset, queer, desperate for a bedding, and being granted their wish. Irving knows Tozer’s churlishness in this moment is the realization that yes, this is actually happening, and no, he cannot ruin this, because it will never happen again, and it will be all his fault, and the tears will drip, drip, drip.

Tozer is still not moving.

Irving stretches out his hand. “What am I doing right now?”

Less than a heartbeat for the answer. “Reaching for me.”

“That’s not going to change. I promise.”

When Tozer finally turns, his face isn’t wet, but his eyes have a fevered cast. He blinks and turns his head to the side, but when he crosses the steps between himself and Irving, he pushes their hands together, lacing their fingers. He stands a little straighter when he brings his other hand to Irving’s face. Irving takes Tozer’s wrist and holds it to his nose. That sharp, bitter fragrance. Most men on board smoke but the smoke only truly belongs to Solomon Tozer for John Irving, and it probably always will.

They won’t be graced with an “always” of tonight’s actions. This has to happen now.

The only sin is the denial of a pure want.

Irving yanks Tozer’s hand and Tozer nearly falls onto him but catches himself and plants both knees around Irving’s hips. He pulls Irving’s face against his chest, rubbing his cheek into Irving’s hair. Irving pulls at Tozer’s uniform jacket and when Tozer has shrugged it off, Irving lays it on the pillow. He unbuttons Tozer’s shirt while Tozer pushes his hands in and out of Irving’s hair, inhaling. “Clean laundry,” he murmurs. “So fresh. Why don’t you smoke? Is it a vice?”

“No, actually, that’s not why.” Irving tugs Tozer’s shirt over his head and throws it in some direction, he’s not sure which. “The first time I tried it, I coughed so hard I nearly suffocated. It was traumatic.”

“I’m sorry.” Tozer laughs. Then he’s only breathing again, and then he says, “I don’t say that to anyone, ever. ‘I’m sorry.’” As soon as he’s bare chested, he pulls Irving’s face against his skin, holding him there. “Too proud by miles. I feel it frequently, though. The need to say sorry.”

“Truly?” Irving presses his fingertips into Tozer’s skin and breathes in his smoky scent while Tozer gets to work on Irving’s buttons.

“Yes. But only to you.”

Irving laughs before he can help it. Tozer’s hands are faster than the ships propeller used to be and Irving’s jacket and shirt are discarded in who-knows-which direction in no time. “You’re lying. I can hear your heartbeat, you know. I can quite literally hear it. It’s very fast.”

“Don’t you think it’s that way because I’m excited and want to fuck right now, right this second, in fact?”

“That too. But there’s a particular murmur.” Irving pulls his face away and Tozer runs his palms wildly around Irving’s back. “You’re a good actor,” he whispers.

Tozer stops his hands for the briefest of moments. “I have to be.”

“Why?”

Tozer’s shoulders slump but he answers. “We Marines. We’re different from you lieutenants. All we do behind your backs is rip you apart and feed you to the dogs. If I’m not flip, not callous, I’m not strong. And if I’m not strong, I’ll be eaten alive too.” He takes his hands from Irving’s back and clutches Irving’s face, thumbs tracing down his cheekbones. “But it’s a lie. I’ve loved you lieutenants. I loved how straight your backs are, how low you bow to the captains, how butter wouldn’t melt in your mouths.”

Irving raises his eyebrows. “You overestimate us. There are plenty of us who don’t-”

“Oh, I don’t care. I don’t care if it’s only an image. There’s something so beautiful about the pageantry of it. I used to think so, anyway.” He fingers the cupid’s bow of Irving’s top lip.

“And you don’t think so now.”

“No. No, it’s all gone to rot for me. When I realized I wanted a man, nothing else seemed very important. Not rank, not file. I wanted to be equal to someone more than ever.” The soft lamplight burns a beautiful orange on his cheeks. “I thought ‘Fuck it.’ I’m sick of being the worst of everyone. I mean, if I’m the worst person here, so be it. But I don’t want to be the worst _man_. I don’t.”

Irving kisses his lips against Tozer’s finger. “You’re not.” He thinks about the nights he’s lain awake, chewing a fingernail, wondering if he’s the lowliest of creatures. And that if he admits it to himself and confesses it to God, maybe there’s some salvation to be had in the words _I’m sorry._ ” You’re not. I’m sorry you’d ever think that.”

“I am too. Thank you. No, I mean that. I’ll probably still worry. I can’t help it. It’s burned into us, isn’t it? No, that’s not even the right word. What’s stronger than ‘burn’? Scorched? I don’t know. You know what I mean. I don’t have to tell you.”

Fire, burning to ashes, the saddest thing in the world, the equivalent of _You’re bad, so non-existence of the soul is your fate_. “No, you don’t. Let me kiss you more.”

Tozer breathes in deeply and arches his neck. Irving closes the gap and kisses along its edge. Tozer makes a helpless sound, rises, and pushes down against Irving’s groin. Irving feels himself stir and presses his forehead into Tozer’s shoulder, his heels digging into the floor. Tozer is fully hard on his next rubbing and they balance themselves up and down in silence for a few moments before Tozer breathes hoarsely, “Fuck me like I’m a good man, good for once in my goddamn life.”

Irving makes a weeping sound this time. “If only I could be as good.”

“Then be it now, won’t you?”

***

They neither of them truly know what they’re doing. Tozer admits he’s never actually been with another man while he unbuttons Irving’s pants, then his own, and then takes Irving’s cock in his hand and simply holds it, eyes closed, face blissful. Irving thinks that if this little is enough to make Tozer this happy, then he wouldn’t ask for more, nothing else but Tozer’s warm hand as his own blood beats sweet and fast. But Tozer opens his eyes soon enough and hauls Irving to him, licking the curve of his neck in one long stroke. He seems desperate to touch every part of Irving at once, his hands frantically palming Irving’s chest, playing with thumbing a nipple back and forth, his other hand squeezing his arse cheeks, fingering the cleft in between. Irving holds on somehow, he doesn’t know how, and he doesn’t care until he feels his pleasure heightening quicker and quicker and then he has to shove Tozer off him before this ends too soon and catch his breath which feels too large for his body. Like he could happily let it fill his lungs like this for the rest of his life, heaving because of another man’s touch.

While he’s still evening out, he pushes his legs between Tozer’s and rubs them up and down. Tozer gathers Irving to his chest and Irving listens to his heartbeat like he used to listen to mass, solemnly but keenly. It’s not a sound to be taken lightly, but it must be absorbed not only into the ear but into the entire consciousness. But now he knows it’s what mass should have always felt like and never did: the sound of a kiss from one powerful being of love, a kiss to a man who deserves every kind of ecstasy.

Tozer tries to put his hands back on Irving but Irving bats him away as he lays his chest flush against him and makes his way down his body, only allowing Tozer’s hands to play with his hair or stroke shapes on his back. Irving pushes his thumbs on Tozer’s clavicle, licks it, bites at it, suddenly ravenous in a way he’s never known and that excites him. It’s excited Tozer too, cock hard between their bodies and heels running up and down their tangled shins. Irving continues licking and kissing his way down Tozer’s body and only stops when he reaches the lines indented from his hips down to his groin. Irving has never seen the lines on anyone but himself and seeing them on another man lurches his heart. They’re so beautiful, and they need worshipping accordingly, so he strokes them each with a delicate fingertip. He tells Tozer how beautiful they are and Tozer laughs in surprise, leading to a brief tangent of how Tozer has never given them a thought, never given his body much of a thought, never expected another man to truly give it too much thought if he were lucky ever to know one. Irving asks what Tozer expected from being in bed with a man, and Tozer says that he’s not sure it would even have been in a bed, it might have only been in a back alley with only his trousers pulled down and the rest of his body hardly touched.

And Irving feels the solemnity again. This is something Tozer has clearly given much thought to, and painful thought, and that’s part of the hearts weeping, Irving understands now. He pulls himself up from Tozer’s hips for a moment to rest his head on the smoky jacket, face close to Tozer’s. He tells him how he’s realized that he’s never even allowed himself these kinds of thoughts, the thoughts of being either in bed with a man or being with him in _some_ way, but that he knows the thoughts have always been there, itching under the skin of his mind. That word again, _itch_. But it’s so much bigger than the random, spasmodic itch that is gone with a quick scratch. It’s the itch of wounds trying to heal, only to be poked open again when hopelessness blows in like the meanest of drafts, and then the healing must begin again and the itching aggravates again but it will all be unraveled again, so why try. Irving moves down to Tozer’s chest and lays his cheek on his heart again and listens for awhile. Tozer holds him while Irving clears the ground over his forbidden thoughts and lets them breathe for the first time in his life.

Yes, he’s always wanted men. Yes, he’s always wanted to be touched by them. And yes, he’s always wanted to be loved by them. Maybe just one. If only just one, in fact, then the weeping might not stop, because his heart would still be his own, but it can be let to flow freely when in the arms of the man he loves.

After he’s spoken for what feels like an hour, they’re silent, Tozer stroking Irving’s arm and Irving pressing his forehead into Tozer’s. They’ve not broached the topic of love. Irving doesn’t think they will, and he accepts this. Maybe it’s a kind of love to give this touching, this talking, this experience to one another, without needing “I love you”s to be exchanged.

Soon after, Irving is done with words and his face is back down to Tozer’s beautiful hip lines, and he licks them all the way down to where they disappear from his pelvis and now there’s his cock to enjoy. And he enjoys it very much as Tozer shudders beneath him, cursing, thrusting upwards as Irving experiments with every manner of licking and sucking he can think of. He’s giddily surprised at how far he can fit Tozer down his throat and Tozer’s long string of curses is endearing, fond to Irving in his joy.

Tozer has to rapidly tap Irving’s shoulders with both hands and breathe _stop, stop_ and Irving jerks himself away, alarmed, worrying he’s hurt him somehow. _No, no_ , Irving didn’t hurt him. Not at all. It felt like glory in its fullest essence. But Tozer has an idea.

He tells Irving, who actually whimpers, which is hilarious to Tozer, so much that he laughs so loud that Irving has to cover his mouth while he tries to stifle his own mirth. Then it’s back to the task at hand. Tozer rolls Irving over onto his back, the swift tumble a joy of legs and feet still intertwined. This time it’s Tozer who lays himself flush against Irving. He strokes down the side of Irving’s body before he lays in such a position that the lengths of their cocks are fully touching. He gently wraps a hand around both and pumps them once.

Irving’s not sure that his heart won’t give out when Tozer does it a second and then a third time. Even in the fantasies he never let blossom, he didn’t imagine anything like this. He asks Tozer if this is something he’s imagined before and Tozer admits that yes, this has been a particular dream, that the idea of two men’s cocks touching at once has been almost painfully erotic to him. Irving thinks briefly about the word “erotic,” Eros, that god of desire. And if desire fulfilled is ecstasy, then maybe his pantheon of deities has expanded. And that is blasphemy but rolling his hips in time with Tozer’s is the only thing in the world right now so questions of the great unknown are not knowable, nor need they be.

They’re so warm together, both their cocks and their entire bodies. Irving’s knees rise involuntarily on either side of Tozer’s hips. He’s clutching Tozer’s back and digs his nails into it as they rock together, then tries to apologize for any pain he may have caused, which is difficult because speaking is tricky between gasps of joy. Tozer manages to mumble that he doesn’t care how hard Irving digs his fingers in, just as long as he’s enjoying their cocks moving together, which is the ideal, so yes he is enjoying it, yes, yes, yes. So they stop talking and only grunt and moan and half-sob as Irving relishes their lengths and thicknesses together, Tozer’s palm and fingers and wrist. Irving is vaguely aware that they’re shaking the bed and somehow that makes it all the more enjoyable, the idea that the effect of their bodies can move a physical object. Wetness is spreading between Tozer’s fingers and they’re both slicked up as he keeps pumping them and Irving bucks up harder with each movement. Tozer breathes in Irving’s ear that he’s very close to coming and Irving says to move as fast as possible then, and the bed is most definitely going to fall apart and they’ll be left in the wreckage and only Eros himself will be able to rescue them.

Tozer clearly knows his body well because he hums _yes_ just a moment before he shakes wildly and then arches and then comes on Irving, and the feeling of that is so novel and delightful and jaw-dropping that Irving comes not ten seconds later. He didn’t know he could throw his head back so far, but the smoky pillow, the feel of Tozer’s come on his skin, and Tozer’s hand still wrapped tight around him force his body to be out of control for a few moments. For a man known and admired by his peers for his control and modesty and moderation, losing all his wits is like free-falling from a height he could only wish were higher. He’s so happy he could scream.

Tozer’s breath is hot on Irving’s neck as they lay together in the afterglow, Irving’s knees finally falling and his legs flattening but with Tozer still cradled between his hips. They’re going to have quite a bit of cleaning up to do between their sweat and the other wetness but it can wait. Irving runs a finger softly up and down Tozer’s spine and Tozer buries his face deeper into Irving’s neck and it’s only when Irving realizes that they’re both falling asleep that he shakes Tozer and whispers. They sit up, separating unhappily, but before Irving can look around for a cloth for them to begin cleaning up with, Tozer moves his face in very close to Irving’s. Very, very close. There’s a question in his eyes, which are glowing in both hope and nervousness, and Irving tries his damndest to answer _yes, I want to_ as he kisses him on the mouth for the very first time, lips parted and pressing hard, long-held dreams exchanged.

***

By the clock, they estimate they have about twenty minutes left before it would be peculiar for other men to see Lieutenant John Irving exiting Sergeant Solomon Tozer’s cabin.

Tozer fiddles with Irving’s hand and kisses it as Irving wraps his chest around Tozer’s back and tangles up their legs again. They’re cleaned and dressed now and they need to use this time wisely, and that means going back to bed for what time remains to them.

“I can’t explain,” Tozer whispers.

“Shh. No need.”

“Yes, yes there is a need. This might be all that’s allowed me. I’ll never do this again, just like this, with anyone. You are…well, you’re my legacy this way, my legacy of happiness in this forsaken place. I need you to know that.”

Irving rubs his cheek against Tozer’s hair and kisses near his ear. “This wouldn’t have happened without you chasing that happiness. You should know that.”

“I do. I suppose I do. But you were the one who called back to me when I shouted. It all felt like nonsense before that. ‘Fuck me, someone, please.’ Pointless. I just wanted someone to touch me so badly. Well, not _someone_. Another man. And not just because there are only men here. But because men are all I want. And I found one I wanted the most.”

Irving’s heart squeezes at that. “That’s an honor. And you found me because you _tried_. That’s no small thing. You’ll remember that?”

“I’ll try. I will. And you? Are you going to the ninth circle of Hell because of this? Because of me?”

Irving laces their fingers together and shakes his head against Tozer’s. There’s only clear water from here on in, not water for walking on, just gazing at and enjoying. “There’s no punishment for closing wounds with the stuff of what your spirit needs. Needs in every fiber of it to feel whole and right. There can’t be a punishment. I cannot believe that. No. Neither of us are damned.”

“So you’re not going to whip yourself later. Regretting this.”

“No. I’ve beaten all my bones to the breaking point my whole life. I have needed healing.” Irving unlaces their fingers and puts his hand on Tozer’s heart. “God is never far from me. But if I am to beat anything, I’m beating this beat of your heart into my blood. To remind me to stop shedding it needlessly.”

Tozer makes a breathy sound, half a sigh and half a laugh, a happy one. “I don’t think I could ask for more. I’m not going to cry. Fuck it, yes I am. I don’t know how much I’ll see you from now on. But if I do, every time I see you, when you see me back, know that I’m right here in bed with you always. Feeling beautiful and proud. You said you were proud of me. In as many words.”

“I did, and I am.”

“Well, I’m proud of you too. You can have God but still want a man and still love both. I’m not asking you to say you love me. But you can do both from now on. With anyone. And you always could have, but I think you really know that now.”

Irving kisses Tozer’s shoulder. “I’d do it with you if I had the choice.”

Tozer leans his head back to look Irving in the eyes. “You do have a choice.”

Irving exhales a breath and lets the mud of self-scorn leave and die with it. “I’ll be right here.”

He closes his eyes and pictures Eros nocking an arrow and he waits for the graceful, visceral hit. When it comes, he kisses Tozer again and amends, “I’ll be right here,” to “I’ll be always right here, nowhere else, and with you. No one else.”

***

They spend the rest of their minutes developing a code for communication when they’re separated. After they leave the ships, Tozer blows cigarette smoke at Irving when he sees him to make him happy. Irving brushes off his shoulders in return, to show both of them that the cross he bore is splinters now and the weight of it is one less thing to stagger his steps towards the man he wants to be, and is.


End file.
